Busy Little Beaver

It’s been surprisingly busy around here. Enough so that I really haven’t been very mindful of the blog posts. I’ve largely been focused on my novel WIP as well as continued practice on the artwork that I should probably title “Procrastination” since it keeps putting off getting made. There was also writing a new theme for the website, and I already have a few tweaks I want to do with it now that it’s live.

I’m not ready to start talking about the novel outside of a few select people. There is often a danger with talking about a work in progress too much too soon. The talk itself can trick the brain into thinking it’s already done the work when all the hard work still lays ahead. Right now I’m tearing apart my first draft in preparation for the second. It’s long been my view that this is where the really work of the novel occurs. The first draft gets you acquainted with the characters, settings, and conflicts while the second draft is where you take all of that and actually make it into something that has a shot of being readable. I will say this. It’s a SF piece and if you like The Connor Wars, I think you’ll be likely to enjoy this as well. Shhh…I can say no more.

The art piece required me to learn how to write in what is known as an engrosser’s script that was in use in late 18th century America. The piece will take a while to do, and I don’t want to start until I know I’ll have the block of time as well as confidence that I’m practiced. If I don’t do at least a few lines of script nearly every day, I can lose my edge and have to spend more time getting back up to speed. Now that spring has all but arrived, and the yard and household tasks that come with it, time is now at a premium. I’m not sure when I’m actually going to dive in and commit art. I also have a half-finished piece on the easel and a few works that are now begging for attention.

I’ve been wanting to update the theme for this site for a while. While I liked the magazine style that has been part of the site since when it changed from “Ellipses” to “TIB” a number of years ago, it was time for a change. If nothing else, I needed to clean up some of the HTML and PHP code to fit in better with current practices. I realized that I also needed a change in presentation. As I mentioned in a previous post, I don’t want to be needlessly repetitious. While there is much to be said for keeping topics on the front page, especially as it applies to web traffic, I don’t like having to pay twice for the same produce. There was also the general election and all the rancor that emerged from that. I didn’t want to be sucked down that black hole of rhetoric any more than necessary. I certainly didn’t want TIB to become overtly partisan. It’s not a political blog, after all.

One of the nice things about WordPress is that it offers the option to have different formats for different sorts of posts. Since I’ve been known to do the Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ social networking, I figured that it was wrong of me to slight my own blog from similar off-the-cuff contributions. That means I’ll be putting up more links, asides, statuses, and other social net sort of content here. Since that hardly lends itself to rigidly confined formatting, I opted to try a more dynamic layout that can work both on desktops and mobile devices. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not yet exactly what I want it to be, but I’m working on improving it.

And that’s why I haven’t posted a lot lately. I’ve been working. And letting life happen…which is a time-consumer on a whole ‘nother level that we won’t get into here. I hope to get back to a more regular posting schedule. All I need is the time and a star to steer by.